The inside of the "eat" was not attractive, nor was the food the
slovenly waiter brought them. Dugan ate fervently. It didn't matter to
him that America was no longer America, or that American coffee was no
longer coffee.
But Manning dawdled. He had sat down with his back to the wall, so that
his eyes could rove freely over the whole cramped interior; and he was
all taut expectation. He was waiting for a sign.
Within ten minutes after their entry, three men had come in and sat
down, two of them together. They might have been ordinary customers,
but to Manning's covertly searching gaze they did not look sufficiently
undernourished to be twenty-first century Americans. They looked like
Germans.
The next arrivals were a youthful couple, and then for a while no one
came in. Manning ordered another cup of "coffee." Then he got a shock.
For when he looked down, reaching for his cup, it was gone. He blinked,
and it was there, solid, chipped and stained. He glanced briefly up
at the unnoticing Dugan, then back to the cup--and there was no cup.
And then there was, and he sat and squinted at it, struggling with a
glimmer of understanding that this was what he had been waiting for.
Their table was for four. Out of the corner of his eye Manning thought
he saw somebody sitting in the chair at his right. He turned his head
quickly, and there was no one. The chair was empty. Too empty. His
brain tried to crystalize that intuitive conviction, but failed.
He glanced sidelong at the suspiciously well-fed men. They sat morosely
over glasses of what looked like beer, and paid no attention. But
Manning knew that there was an invisible man in the room.
He sat hesitating over his next move, when a voice screamed in his
ear. It was a tiny thread of voice, not a whisper; it sounded like
someone shouting frenetically over a bad telephone connection.
"Don't move," it commanded urgently. "I see you know I'm here beside
you, and that you're being followed. Are you willing to follow
instructions? If so, lay your right hand on the table."
Manning did so. The gnat-like voice shrilled, "All right. You leave
here, turning left. Follow your nose and don't look back. About five
minutes' walk will bring you to a bridge. Further instructions then.
Act natural!"
Despite the final injunction, Manning hardly knew how they got out onto
the street. Out of possible earshot of their shadows, he explained
hurriedly to Dugan. "I thought they'd try to contact us. We have the
Gestapo itself to thank for that, I'll bet. Even if it can't put the
finger on the underground, it must know enough about them so that we
were dumped off here for bait, it could let the word go out so that the
underground would hear about us and grab at the bait right away. They
didn't lose any agents on that raid in Germany, so they must have been
pretty curious to learn that a couple of their men had been picked up
on the scene and sent to New York! Now things are going to break."
The bridge loomed out of the darkness ahead. It was a wooden structure,
crossing a narrow creek. Midway of the echoing span, they paused, and
Manning pricked up his ears. He was not disappointed. The invisible
presence said, "Good. I trust you can both swim? All right--drop over
the railing, and swim straight back to the shore you just left, only
come out under the bridge. I'll meet you there. Good luck!"
They looked at each other. "I heard him," Dugan said, and without more
words placed a hand on the rickety railing and vaulted out over the
black water. Manning gave him a few seconds to get clear, and followed.
He came up clinging to his orientation, and struck out; when he
splashed ashore, Dugan was already shaking himself on the narrow strip
of sand below the bank.
* * * * *
And a third man emerged abruptly from the shadow of the bridge piles.
He was an ordinary-looking man in a worn leather jacket and patched
trousers, but his face was masked by a dark hood, blank save for
eye-slits, and on his back he carried something like a small pack with
two small levers protruding. In his right hand was a pistol, and in his
left a bundle; he dropped the latter on the ground and stepped back.
"Put those on," he hissed. "Quick, before they get here!"
The bundle was two outfits such as the stranger wore. They donned
them as instructed; the hoods were stiff with wire, and connected by
a flexible cord to the packs. Manning eyed the gun speculatively; the
masked man explained softly, "It's not that I don't trust you, but
those gadgets are too valuable to take _any_ chances with. They're
invisibility units. Start them by pressing here." He pulled down one
of the levers on his pack; he seemed to blur slightly, but they could
still see him. "The headgear insulates you pretty well from the effect.
Go on, start those units!" Heavy feet were thundering overhead on the
bridge planks.
They obeyed; the packs made a faint hum. The stranger relaxed visibly.
"Now we're okay," he said in a normal voice. "By the time they catch
on, we'll be a long way from here."
Directly above, an angry snarl: "_Sie sind grade ins Wasser gesprungen!
Wer hatte erwartet--_"
Somebody else answered, "_Vielleicht wird ein Boot dort unten gelegen
haben_."
"Good guessing," approved the masked man cheerfully. He motioned
Manning and Dugan toward where a small skiff lay beached between the
piles. "Help me launch this. First, though, turn your units up to full
power--like this--so they'll cover the boat."
Manning was startled at the man's bravado; as all three laid hold of
the boat, he whispered anxiously, "Won't they hear--"
"Not if we shouted our heads off," the other answered. "With these
units going, we're not only invisible, but inaudible and practically
intangible. I've walked through a cordon that was closing in on me
with linked arms." He sprang nimbly into the bow of the boat. "Grab an
oar, you two, and make yourselves useful. I've been through a lot of
trouble on your account." He seemed to decide that introductions were
finally in order. "My name's Jerry Kane. At any rate, it's my favorite
alias."
Manning and Dugan named themselves and fell to rowing. "Downstream,"
said Kane, and he gazed back at the bridge with interest as they pulled
away. Manning glanced back over his shoulder; there were dark figures
swarming on the bridge, and lights, and a car had stopped there; even
as he looked a searchlight beam swayed out across the water, moving
systematically back and forth. For a moment it fell full upon the
rowboat, and Manning ducked involuntarily; but the light passed on and
there was no outcry, no shots came.
Manning said hoarsely, "That light was on us! It didn't go through us,
or anything of the sort. A body that reflects light is visible. So how
the devil--"
"We're not optically invisible," answered Kane amusedly. "So far as
I know, that's a physical impossibility. Actually, those Germans saw
us, but they didn't notice us. Ever catch yourself looking right at
something and not seeing it, because it was too familiar or because you
were thinking about something else? That's the effect the field has.
Anything in the middle of it hides behind a psychic block in the mind
of whoever looks at it. That's why it works on hearing, too, and even
on touch. It's not perfect; if you set off a magnesium flare in front
of somebody, or punched him in the nose, he'd notice something was
up--but hardly before. When you get acquainted with the effect it makes
you feel like a ghost. Back in that cafe, I had to shout in your ear
till I deafened myself before I could make you hear."
* * * * *
They glided down the current, and the lights and voices around the
bridge receded rapidly. As Manning bent to his oar, his imagination
was busy with the first item of twenty-first century technology which
went completely beyond his twentieth-century knowledge. In Germany
he had seen the evidences of a mighty and advanced civilization,
but everything had been the logical perfection of inventions already
known....
Kane seemed to read his thoughts. "Working like we do, we can't compete
with the Germans in things that call for a lot of resources and
equipment. They have all the big weapons--the rockets and tanks and
atomic bombs. For anything to be useful to us, it has to be something
that can be invented and built in a cellar. So we've had to open up
brand-new lines of development--and in fields like psychoelectronics
we're miles ahead of the Germans, because they didn't have to....
Better pull over. We don't want to get rammed," he interrupted himself.
A blinding eye was bearing down on them across the water. In its stark
glare Manning felt nakedly visible again. But they veered sharply
toward the bank, and the launch went past in a swish of foam, still
scanning river and shore ahead.
"Where we going?" Dugan asked practically.
"We're about there," answered Kane. "Easy now." He pointed to where
a jumble of ruins projected like a pier into the stream, the ripples
lapping and gurgling in the spaces between the great piled fragments.
"In there--the only space big enough for the boat. Better duck." Their
craft slid with scant clearance into an opening like the mouth of a
cave. Kane produced a flashlight, and they saw that a timbered tunnel
ran back into the bank at right angles to the entrance.
"Up to the end," ordered Kane. They poled with oar-thrusts against the
tunnel sides for a score of yards, until the boat bumped against a
wooden platform at the end of the shaft. Kane sprang ashore and made
fast, and the others followed. The flashlight beam searched out a
trapdoor; below it were stairs that led downward. At the bottom they
trod on cement, and there was another door, on which Kane knocked in a
deliberate pattern.
Presently a bolt was shot back, and the door swung open. The man who
opened it was hooded and it was a little hard to keep him in sight,
even for those likewise protected. When he saw Kane, however, he
switched off his invisibility unit. The new arrivals did likewise, and
all of them slipped off their stifling hoods with relief.
Jerry Kane had a surprisingly youthful and unlined face, topped with
curly blond hair which women must have loved to run their fingers
through. He didn't look much like an underground plotter. The man who
had opened the door fitted the role better; he was gaunt, blue-jawed
and dour.
The room they had entered had begun life as a basement; it was big,
concrete-walled, ill-lit by an electric bulb dangling from the low
ceiling, its furnishings a long table and a number of chairs which
indicated its use as a gathering-place for a good many people. The only
other person in it now was a massive man who sat at the table, an open
book spread out before him, and stared unblinkingly at those who had
come in.
"Most of our regular agents are out--looking for you," Kane remarked.
He waved them to seats, and sat down himself on the table's end.
"However, we have here Harry Clark"--the blue-jawed man--"and Igor
Vzryvov, one of the Russian members."
Clark nodded noncommittally. The big Russian rumbled in faintly
accented English: "Pleased to meet you. I have never met any time
travelers before."